The practical considerations given by my aunt make sense. But they leave some unanswered questions. After all, Madras was the epicenter of British South India. Would there not have been many, many people – politicians, journalists, and the intellectual elite – living in Madras who knew about Bharati and his work?

This is a more troublesome issue. I believe that Bharati’s funeral procession reflected the prejudices of his society. In particular, why was Bharati neglected by the elite of his times?

As far as Bharati is concerned, everybody talks about the great “poverty” in which he lived (rather like James Joyce!). My grandmother, Chellamma, says in her book, Bharatiyar Charithiram:

“Sometimes, there was no rice to cook in the house. Bharatiyar would be upstairs, immersed in discussions with his disciples. …. If we had four annas in our hands, we would buy some bananas and satisfy our hunger. We would receive milk from the milk woman in advance, without payment. …We spent two or three months like this.”

Apparently Bharati did not even want to hear the word illai (“there is not”). There was a strict rule in the house that his family should not even mention the words, “There is no rice in the house.” Instead, he said jokingly, “say Aharam Iharam,” to signify arisi illai.

Bharati talks about the miseries of poverty in his poem, Lakshmidevi Saranpuguthal. What concerned him was the demoralizing nature of poverty: “the mind that hates even the Vedas, the demeaning behavior of the lowly, association with the unworthy, all the efforts that go to waste (like a lamp that is submerged in a well), gaining nothing even if you cross the ocean,” and so on.

*

In her book, my aunt, Shakuntala, says that Bharati’s close friend Surendranath Arya gave a speech at the poet’s funeral, and that this speech resembled the famed speech given by Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I have always wondered why she compared Arya’s speech with Marc Antony’s. Nobody has a record of Arya’s speech. But, I wonder if the speech was cleverly presented, in the sense that he had to repeat certain facts, in order to clarify certain points, and yet avoid an open condemnation of certain facts, people, or experiences that happened in Bharati’s life!

*

3

பேராசிரியர் திரு P.K. சுந்தரராஜன் எழுதியுள்ள கட்டுரையில் ஒரு பகுதி:

It was shortly after Bharati’s death in 1921 that people who had known him began to write short accounts about him and their memory of the contact. A group of Bharati acquaintances – S. Somasundara Bharati, V Sakkarai Chettiar, and Parali Su Nellaiyappar – published a Bharatiyar Charithiram by Bharati Prachuralayam, the company that owned by members of the Bharati family. Bharati’s half-brother, C Visvanathan, a Manamadurai schoolteacher, wrote in 1929, his book, Bharati and His Works, also published by Bharati Prachuralayam. Similar books were published by Suddhananda Bharati, Akkur Ananthachari, Ku Pa Rajagopalan, Pe Ko Sundararajan (Chitty), Sakthidasan Subramanian, Thi Ja Ranganathan and a few others. This publishing activity lasted through 20 years roughly, until 1940. In 1941, Bharati’s widow,

Chellammal, published her 1Bharatiyar Charithiram,which has remained a Classic in Bharati Studies. And Va. Ra. (Va Ramaswamy Iyengar,) a close disciple of C Subramania Bharati, published his 2Mahakavi Bharatiyar three years later, in 1944. Va. Ra. had known Bharati in person, a credential which has nothing to do with skills or training in literary criticism. His book, like many another of this genre, is simply gushy, expresses uncritical admiration for the poet, and focuses on stray events of the poet’s eventless life, much of it hearsay. Bharati’s wife, Chellammal’s book describes the poet’s brief life story, the intricacies of his family life, his relationships with his wife and children, and his many relatives and friends and associates; we will be hard put to find another equally authentic source. Then there is the style of her book, which emanates from the heart!

Soon after India attained her freedom from British rule, the poet who sang,

Aduvome pallu paduvome

Ananda sudanthiram adainthuvittom enru

began to be paid attention to, and there is a whole range of writing on Bharati during the 1950s and the 1960s. Every educated Indian, regardless of how badly educated, had to write on C. Subramania Bharati’s writings, in English and in Tamil. If you were a High Court judge, with time hanging on your hands, you used up your life with a learned treatise on the poetry of Bharati. Books by K S Ramaswami Sastriyar, P Thirukoota Sundaram, M P Sivagnanam, known popularly as Ma. Po. Si, Pa Mi Sundaram, M S Subramania Iyer, P Mahadevan, Sami Palaniappan, and scores of others repeated the same stuff about Bharati being a great patriotic poet, who “gave his life for the country.” In any case, not a single piece of writing on Bharati, during the 1950s and the 1960s, shows any understanding of how the words work, and why his poetry created the Renaissance in 20th century Tamil literature. Yadugiri Ammal’s book ,Bharati

Ninaivugal is an atrocious book, with many errors of fact, the objective of the writer being to establish herself as a dearer person to C Subramania Bharati than his own two children, 1 Bharatiyar Charithiram, Chellamma Bharati, Edited by S. Vijaya Bharati (Chennai: Amudha Surabi Publications,

The Hindu, under the title, 4This Day that Age writes about the following news that happened onMarch 11, 1954:

“The poems of Subramania Bharat(h)i have been brought out by the Madras Government and copies are available with the Publications Depot in Madras city. Giving this information in the Madras Legislative Council on March 10, Mr. C. Rajagopalachari, Chief Minister, showed the House a sample set. . . . . Mr. V. Chakkarai Chettiar enquired if the family of the poet would get a share of the proceeds of sales or profits. The Chief Minister replied: we provided for certain benefits to the family when when we took up this business. There is no profit likely to be made by Government on the publication.” Notice the ignorant assertion of the then Chief Minister of Madras, that Bharati’s books are not likely to be profit-making! ***

It is against this background that the poet’s granddaughter, S Vijaya Bharati, produced the firstever systematic study of C Subramania Bharati’s Works. This was a thesis submitted to Annamalai University for a PhD degree in Tamil, written in English; and it was examined by Professor L. P. KR. Ramanathan Chettiar, and her guide, Mu Varadarasanar, the Tamil scholar of this time, and externally, by Kamil Zvelebil of Czechoslovakia’s Charles University.

***

*** S. Vijaya Bharati’s comment: When the copyright of Bharati’s writings was bought from C. Viswanatha Iyer, the Government paid Bharati’s wife and two daughters a sum of Five Thousand rupees (Rs. 5,000); at that time, Bharati’s family did not get any additional benefits other than that. Neither the Government nor the agreement that

Chellamma made with Bharati Proachuralayam did recognize that any share of the profit would be paid to the family in the future. The Chief Minister’s reply to Chakkarai Chettiar’s question that the Government had already paid some “benefits” was not true; and the Chief Minister’s expectation that there was no profit to be made on the publication of Bharati’s works is totally unacceptable.

Many of these cases are illustrated by the Thanjavur “research” edition of Bharati’s works.

When Bharati’s birth centenary was celebrated in 1982, the Chief Minister of Madras called for the preparation of a “special edition” of Bharati’s works. 3 lakhs of rupees (Rs 300,000) were allotted for this work, and the project was given to Tanjavur University. The Editorial group chosen for this work included Chu. Chellappan, Pa. Chidambaram, Chini Vishwanathan, T.N. Ramachandran, and T.V.S. Mani. The Editor of the book was Ma. Ra. Po. Gurusamy. The first edition of this book was published in 1987; the second in 1989; and the “corrected,” third edition appeared in 2001. As far as I am aware, no further editions have appeared since then.

I am deeply troubled by this book, which raises various, serious concerns. The sources for the Thanjavur edition include all of the questionable items that I have listed above. They were not the original publications, from Bharati’s own lifetime, Bharati Ashramam, Bharati Prachuralayam, or the first Government editions. As a result, poems of questionable authorship are included in this book, and appear alongside those which are certainly Bharati’s (the book is organized chronologically). Overall, there are about 50 such poems in the book.

The establishment of the text of Bharati’s poems, as it appears in this edition, also presents certain grave problems. The authoritative sources of Bharati’s poems are not given priority in the establishment of the text. Rather, these sources are indicated only in the footnotes to specific poems. For example, a given poem might be reprinted in the Tanjavur edition as it appeared in a journal (eg. Swadesamitran): the text would not be taken from Bharati’s own book publication, or from any of the authoritative publications brought out after his death. As the editor of the Thanjavur edition says: “The first version in which the work is published is the one that has been used. Even if Bharati himself has corrected it, those corrections are only indicated in the footnotes” (“Specialty of the Edition,” in the Front Matter of the Thanjavur Edition, 3rd edition 2001).

The editor also says that he has done this in order to give researchers the opportunity to read various versions of the poem, and “choose” whichever ones they think are “best.” He notes: “In order to accomplish this goal, it is sure that the edition will be helpful.”

…From the point of view of the rightful attribution of Bharati’s authorship, this is a nightmare! This attitude will only promote the proliferation of works wrongfully attributed to Bharati, and doubtful judgements about Bharati’s works. If we give researchers the opportunity to “select” versions of Bharati’s works, the original versions are likely to be lost. Each researcher will favor his or her own “findings.” In my opinion, this should absolutely not be allowed. It interferes fundamentally with the establishment of authenticity in Bharati’s texts. What is needed, is just the opposite: a “standard” version of Bharati’s works, based on accurate principles of establishing their authorship and authenticity. Otherwise, the publications are based on, and promote, the false attribution of works not by Bharati to him, and the persistence of words and phrases not approved by him – an inaccurate and shameful situation. I find some of the poems “atrocious;” and I am absolutely sure that they harm Bharati’s reputation. Adding insult to injury, the text of the Thanjavur book is full of mistakes, so that Bharati’s poems are presented to the public flaunting wrong words and other lamentable errors.